Not Alone
by SilverWolf7
Summary: Karkat gets his heart broken. That is bad. Dave is there to pick up the pieces, making sure he doesn't completely crash and burn. That is good. A Davekat bromance story.


As much of a GamKat moirallegiance fan as I am, I cannot get enough of these two boys and their epic bromance. Enjoy the angsty hurt/comfort goodness. Merry Christmas all :)

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Not Alone

His friends had abandoned him.

It was the only thing he could even think after Gamzee had just got done with making sure his heart was in a million tiny pieces.

He didn't really know why either. It had always been a one-way relationship. Well, okay, it had started off a bit more even, as Gamzee had seemed to care about him and papped him out of a few rages, but that stopped shortly after it had started.

He had been so enamoured by the thought of finally having one of his quadrants filled that he hadn't cared at first. Gamzee had fucked up and it was his duty as a moirail to keep him from killing anyone else. And he had been good at it, really good at it.

At first it had been so good and romantic and right, like what he thought a moirallegiance was supposed to be. He would help Gamzee out with his major problems and he would be calmed when Dave riled him up into a raging mess.

Somehow it ended up with the attention to him stopping and Gamzee turning to preaching his clown gods and nothing else. And he had listened. He had sat in that stupid, honking piece of trash of a horn pile and listened to the shit he spewed because it was what he was supposed to do as a moirail.

It didn't help that their times together came so far apart that they had basically stopped altogether until earlier tonight when Gamzee had cornered him, told him he had been stupid and selfish and never took him seriously and dumped him and...

Stopping in the deserted corridor he was in, he leaned heavily against the wall and hugged his arms across his chest. He didn't want to be alone right then, because his mood had reached rock bottom and he needed company and someone to talk to.

But he had tried and failed to find anyone willing to give him so much as the time of day.

Dave was busy in can town with the mayor building an adult bookshop out of food cans and chalk, being silly fools together. Terezi was not there, but yet again, she was keeping to herself a lot lately. When she wasn't trying so hard to keep her relationship with Gamzee secret. Like as if the two of them weren't being so damn obvious about their kismesissitude.

He knew she wouldn't even look at him even if he did find her. She had been so cagey lately, not taking off her role-playing suit and refusing to stay in the room with him if he happened to walk in.

Rose was once more so drunk she had passed out and Kanaya was making sure she didn't drown in her own vomit in her unconscious state. And there's another thing that broke his heart. Their relationship had started off so good, with a healthy matespritship budding between them, and now it was Kanaya taking care of her alcoholic human girlfriend, acting more like a moirail and that hurt everyone. Especially Kanaya.

Rose was too out of it nowadays to realise anything about how destructive her behaviour was to the others on the meteor.

His hands fell from his chest to dangle at his sides, before he slid down the wall into a messy pile of nothing on the floor. He closed his eyes and just concentrated on breathing, because he was just done with everything.

He didn't hear the footsteps as they approached his now final resting place, because like hell he was ever moving from that spot again alive, but he did hear the stupid voice of Dave as he sang under his breath some of that utterly ridiculous slam poetry he had written to keep himself occupied.

He knew the minute Dave spotted him though, because a shadow fell over him and a foot nudged him.

"Hey Karkat, got a book all set for the crappy romance reading corner. This one has Jadebloods on the cover so I'm guessing it's a vampire book. I'm all up for that shit. Vantas, you're being way quiet here dude."

He couldn't speak. His voice didn't seem to be able to get past the lump lodged firmly in his wind tube. It was getting harder to find breath too for that matter.

"You dead or something? Did that chucklefuck juggalo clown kill you? Shit, Karkat, come on dude, answer me."

He managed to bring up the weight that was his head, and even that was hard, and looked at Dave. The human's mouth was down turned in his concerned face and he knew right then it wasn't faked. He was clutching a book to his chest and just like that, Karkat remembered that they had scheduled another reading for that night, because it was one of the things they did together to pass time on this hunk of shit rock.

He couldn't seem to find words right then still. His clogged throat still too tight to get words out. Instead he just heavily swallowed and tried to breathe through the mass choking his airway.

"Karkat, you're really beginning to freak me out, here."

Opening his mouth, he knew was a mistake but he did it anyway. He couldn't get out words, but the high pitched whine of need he let out seemed to freak Strider out even further.

"Are you hurt? Did Gamzee hurt you? Are you bleeding? Do I need to go get someone to help or something?"

Shaking his head, Karkat just lowered his head back down and closed his eyes. God, how could he say without words that he needed company just then, that he needed to hold on to someone and cry and not be ridiculed for it.

"Well, fine. You don't wanna move then stay there."

He thought Dave was going to leave him alone and that was enough of a nudge to start with the waterworks. He swore that he cried enough to have filled buckets with the dammed stuff. God he hated giving in to his stupid emotional impulses.

He hated even more crying in public places.

Dave didn't leave. Instead he sat down and got himself as comfortable as possible on the wall by his side. To his surprise, instead of teasing him mercilessly for breaking down in front of him, Dave seemed to ignore his hysterical moment of snot filled stupidity and instead cracked open the book he found and begun reading in an accented and calming tone.

It helped. Having Dave ignore his crying fit and read to him instead of the other way around made him settle down a bit. And by settle down, it meant wrenched that plug stuck in the back of his throat right out and now he was loudly sobbing as well.

On Dave's shoulder.

While cuddled up to his side.

And all the while Dave just read on, his voice a major comfort even though the words themselves were not heard properly.

By the time his eyes had stopped leaking, his nose was clogged but not running any longer and he had managed to stop the hiccoughs that followed a crying jag, Dave had managed to read the first chapter and was just starting on the second. His head now could pick up the words and read along from his perch on his shoulder.

"I like this story," he whispered. He'd never read it before, as it wasn't one of his collection. It did seem interesting though.

Dave stopped reading, turned to him and grinned. "Yeah, thought you might. You looked a bit upset when you came into Can Town earlier. So, I grabbed one of Kanaya's vampire romance novels. Didn't expect to end up reading it myself though. Out in a hallway with you sobbing all over me. What happened anyway?"

He shook his head. He wasn't ready to admit that Gamzee had dumped him, mainly because the others might try to kill his now ex moirail again. Even after everything done by him, he didn't want him dead...

"Just having a really bad day. Woke up feeling like shit and my mood just plummeted from there. With Terezi ignoring me completely lately, Kanaya too busy making sure Rose doesn't choke on her own bodily fluids after falling unconscious and seeing you having fun with the mayor I just...I felt like everyone was abandoning me. That I was left on my own to deal with my fucked up emotional problems. God I hope this is short lived. Last time I felt like this it lasted 3 perigees..."

"Karkat, dude, bro. You do know you could have joined me and the mayor in Can Town and had some fun right? The last thing this meteor needs is you, the gooey centre keeping us all even remotely together collapsing in a pool of depressed forced solitude."

"Again, you mean? I pretty much was out of commission for half that first year."

"Yeah, and none of us want you to get that down again. Did you know we had you watched almost 24/7? We let you have your quality cuddle time with Gamzee."

That should by rights creep him out, but somehow it didn't. He hadn't known that. It kind of made him feel better that they went out of their way to make sure he didn't do anything stupid to himself. Once he had found that ranting to himself and dealing with his problems that way, he had slowly begun getting better for lack of a better word.

It didn't stop him from hitting lows like this, but still, he was a lot better than he had been.

Yet again, right now he had a reason to be down. His only quadrant mate had just dumped him. But god was he not telling that to Dave.

"So, feeling better now you got that out of your system? Or do you want me to continue reading in the hallway like a tool?"

Quiet for a moment while he thought about it, Karkat shrugged. "I'm not much in a reading mood, but it's nice to be read to. Still, the floor is getting a bit uncomfortable. My block or yours?"

"Yours is closer."

He was helped up off the floor and he leaned himself on Dave's shoulder the entire way back to his respiteblock because he really needed the contact with another living being right then.

Dave didn't seem to mind. He didn't even mind when, an hour later, he fell asleep with the droning voice of Dave right by his ear.

It was the best sleep he had gotten in years. Dave was still there when he woke up again, several hours later.

He felt a lot better now.

He wasn't alone.


End file.
